


Rather Be

by leahalexis



Category: Alias
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-15
Updated: 2005-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahalexis/pseuds/leahalexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sydney rethinks her current line of work. She blames vending machine ham and cheese sandwiches. (Entry for the 2005 Sarkney Summer Challenge at SD-1.net.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rather Be

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime during an alternate season 5; canon-compatible through "A Man of His Word."

I.

There was no one with whom Sydney Bristow would rather be with in a situation like this than her father. That said, there was no place she wouldn’t rather be than where she was at that very moment: in a tiny silk slip of a dress in Lisbon, in the very center of the largest enemy operative gathering of the year.

But no, that wasn’t quite true. She’d even less prefer to be home with Vaughn, trying again to mend the broken tatters of what was left of their relationship. She’d realized weeks ago it was beyond saving, that hardly anything remained there to save, but she hadn’t yet been able to stop trying. Her mind, she supposed, was having trouble catching up with her heart. So in that sense, this mission was a relief. A vacation from matters of the heart. As risky as her and Jack’s presence was, there was beyond that nothing particularly difficult about it. Nothing to steal but information. It was ballsy of them being there, moving along these people as if they belonged, but it had been too good of an opportunity to pass up. Already they had gotten more than they could have ever anticipated—including confirmation of the identity of the head of the CFO, Daniel Debussy.

She exchanged a worried look with Jack as that very man saw them, excused himself from the conversation he’d been in, and started over to them.

The arms dealer with whom they had been chatting paused as Sydney did the honors, tilting her head and gesturing over his shoulder to her right with her champagne flute. “That man,” she asked, letting a hint of Russian accent husk up her vowels, “he is moving here quite quickly. A friend of yours?”

But he arrived before the man could answer. Up close, Sydney noticed the sharp cut of his suit and the flint of his eyes. His jowls sagged, and his hairline had receded, but he still appeared fit, hardy, dangerous.

“Herr Shultze,” Debussy greeted their new friend before turning with shrewd focus to Jack and Sydney. “You should introduce me.”

“Of course,” Shultze said hastily. “This is Jack, and Sydney.”

There was a glimmer of something just short of recognition in Debussy’s narrow, close-set eyes. “Your girlfriend, she is very beautiful,” he said to Jack.

“My daughter,” Jack corrected with a brief smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Your daughter,” Debussy repeated, and bared his teeth in something Sydney felt strongly should not be allowed the term  _grin_. “What did you say your name was?”

“Now, now, Daniel,” Shultze said jovially. He was either extremely foolhardy, or more powerful than Sydney had gleaned from their short conversation. “We keep things friendly.”

Sydney had already begun calculating their best chance of escape. Everyone had been searched at the doors, weapons checked along with their coats, but it didn’t make the situation less dangerous. No one here would take kindly to a pair of CIA agents crashing the party. Marshall had only just managed to adjust their profiles in the system, and he hadn’t had time to alter their names, only their backgrounds. It was quicker and less obvious to alter the data already in the system, Marshall had explained, than to upload new profiles. Even so, he’d only been able to manage so much between the moment the transmitter in Sydney’s necklace had come in range of their system and the moment she and Jack had been visible to the security cameras.

“Daniel, there you are,” a British voice said smoothly, and Sydney turned to find herself looking at Sark of all people. “I was hoping to find you before you left.”

“Ah, Julian,” Debussy said, a malicious gleam in his eyes. Every muscle in Sydney’s body had tensed at the sound of Sark’s voice, and it wasn’t something Debussy had missed. “Have you met—”

“Jack!” Sark cried jubilantly, bypassing Debussy entirely to embrace him—to Debussy’s surprise and Sydney’s shock. Jack’s expression barely flickered as he embraced Sark in return, thumping him heartily on the back before releasing him.

“It’s been a long time, Julian,” Jack said without missing a beat.

“Indeed it has,” Sark agreed before turning to Sydney with a serious expression. “And of course, the lovely Sydney.”

She extended her hand, and Sark took it in his own, bending low over it and brushing his mouth against her knuckles. It was, she thought, to her credit that she did not jerk it immediately away.

“You do recognize this exquisite girl, do you not?” Sark said to Debussy, lingering over Sydney’s fingers.

“You might enlighten me,” Debussy said, inflection hazardous.

Shultze had dropped back somewhat, possibly overwhelmed by the change in dynamic.

“Irina’s daughter, Daniel.” Sark said it with emphasis on Irina’s name—and obviously Sydney’s mother’s name still had currency here, as Debussy blanched.

“I was not aware Irina had ever—”

“Briefly,” Sark said, with a devil-may-care grin at Jack, “very briefly. Although she still has a soft spot for Jack here. And of course Sydney is the jewel of her mother’s quite considerable collection.”

“As you once were?” Debussy said snidely to Sark, which remarkably made Sydney dislike him even more. He turned to her—stiffly, but without the arrogant disbelief he’d displayed previously—and said, “You have your mother’s eyes.”

She smiled with just a touch of disdain—appropriate, she thought, for Irina Derevko’s daughter. “Thank you.”

“Jack,” Sark said, clapping his hand on her father’s shoulder, “would you mind if I danced with your daughter?”

“Julian,” Jack responded, smiling mildly, but with a hint of threat, “I suggest you ask my daughter.”

Sark pursed his mouth, and shook his head as if he were highly amused. “Of course. Sydney, if you would do me the honor?” He lifted his brows, and offered his hand.

Affecting boredom, she took it. It was smooth, and cooler than she’d expected. “Why not?”

She particularly liked the expression on Shultze’s face, which plainly communicated that he wished he’d thought of asking her to dance himself.

“She and Julian were involved once,” Sydney heard Jack say as Sark led her into a simple waltz, “but he became tedious quickly. An excellent operative, of course.” She ducked her head to hide her smile.

“Your father sounds as if he doesn’t approve of me,” Sark murmured, mock surprise in his voice.

“I can’t imagine why not,” she returned, still amused, forgetting that there was nothing, in fact, amusing about this situation—dancing with Sark—at all. The adrenaline rush from having averted potential catastrophe had obviously gone to her head.

She’d never been this close to Sark, she realized as they danced. Their encounters had always been at a distance, with sheets of glass or frozen pools between them. She’d touched him once, she recalled as she considered it, in that club in Paris, but she’d been focused then on Khasinau, and the mission, not the feel of his neck, his cheek, beneath her hand. Even when she'd kissed him the year before, she'd been too busy being Lauren to really notice details. (She did recall that his tongue had burned like alcohol, and she'd bitten him in retaliation.) Being pressed up against the taut line of his body now was disorienting. It made him human in a way he hadn’t been up until that moment. She didn’t think she’d really realized how . . . human . . . he was before.

“Agent Bristow,” Sark inquired, sounding amused, “did you just sniff me?”

She snorted. “I sincerely doubt that.” Except she might have. She couldn’t explain why she was starting to feel flushed. She was hyperaware of her body in his arms, but of course she had to be attentive to her posture, in order to look comfortable, at ease, intimate, for Debussy’s benefit. But her skin shouldn't be humming. It shouldn't be this difficult to relax. If Sark had been planning to expose them, he would have already, no matter what his reasons for assisting them in maintaining their cover were.

“This is a new look for you,” Sydney said to cover her confusion as he led her through the basic step with a mastery that went beyond his usual precise competence, almost to the point of honest enjoyment.

He glanced down at his slim, well-cut suit and unbuttoned shirt collar, surprised. “How so?”

She couldn’t believe she was saying this. “You’re being charming.”

“I’m always charming,” he admonished her, smiling.

 _Yes_ , she thought,  _particularly when threatening me at gunpoint._  Though, thinking about it just then, she supposed he was somewhat correct. At least in comparison to the usual threats on her life. If not charming, than at least genial.  _Because nobody likes an impolite killer._

“Helpful, then,” she amended.

He chuckled. “Consider it a disguise, if you must.”

“It’s unusual,” she insisted. And then she added, “All of this, Sark: the covering for us, being nice . . . why?”

“I believe the words you were searching for,” he suggested as he led her into a slow turn, “were ‘thank you.’” When he pulled her in her belly brushed against his hipbone, and he held her there. “Sydney, I told you I’d changed.”

“Right. Lauren changed you.”

“Jail more than Ms. Reed, all things considered,” he said, “but I suppose she had a fair bit to do with it.” He turned serious, which surprised her, and took the sting out of the words that followed. “Watching her machinations . . . the way she played your Mr. Vaughn . . .”

She thought about correcting him— _not mine anymore_ —but didn’t. His hand had already slid to the small of her back, where it lay hot against the gold silk; it was probably better that he believed her to be taken. It would be too easy for him to fabricate some interest on her part from her actions and her words, otherwise. She tried not to think about why that was so clearly a concern.

Sark shook his head, continuing, “. . . it made me realize how ridiculous all of this is. Not that the work you’re doing isn’t dreadfully important,” the music shifted, slowed as it approached the end, and he pressed her closer against his body, “but wouldn’t you rather be  _living_?”

Jack appeared beside them the moment the song ended. “Sydney, sweetheart, I’ve been called away. I’m afraid we have to go. Say good-bye to Julian.”

She was shaking slightly as she took a step back.  _God._  She steadied quickly, and gave Sark a haughtily tolerant smile that she suspected he would have laughed at in other circumstances. “Julian,” she said, “entertaining, as always.”

“It was a pleasure,” he replied, bringing her hand to his lips once again as he held her eyes.

When he let go, he was smirking. “Jack, we should meet and discuss business sometime.”

“Yes,” Jack said, voice clipped, “let’s.” There was irritation underlying his tone. “Sydney?”

She nodded, and took her father’s arm arm. As they left the ballroom, she shot a look back over her shoulder, expecting Sark to have disappeared into the crowd. But he was still standing there, watching them, a strange smile ghosting across his face.

  
II.

There was a post-it note stuck inside her copy of the latest field reports when she opened her folder Monday morning at the office. “Lunch?” Vaughn’s handwriting read in his signature blue pen across the yellow square.

She sighed, folded the note, and stuck it into her purse. If she was lucky, she’d manage to leave the office at twelve without him seeing her.

She wasn’t lucky.

“Sydney! Wait up,” Vaughn called as she walked through the long hallway that led to the outside world. “I heard you and Jack ran into Sark this weekend.”

“We did,” Sydney said, pausing to let him catch his breath before walking on with him beside her.

“And?” he asked.

“It was . . . weird,” she said, thinking again about the smile he had worn as she and Jack had exited. It had been pleased, she decided, self-satisfied without quite being smug. As if he’d just had a particularly good time, and didn’t mind if everyone knew it.

“I can’t believe he didn’t bust you.” Vaughn shook his head. “That bastard has something up his sleeve.”

“Not . . . necessarily,” she found herself saying.

“Of course he does,” Vaughn said. “It’s Sark.”

Vaughn’s lazy derision irritated her, and so she failed to think through her next words in their entirety. “Look, I know you have a problem with Sark because of Lauren—”

“Sydney, I have a problem with Sark because he’s  _Sark_.”

“—but it's not impossible that he’s . . . changed.”

Vaughn snort communicated his extreme disbelief. “Right.”

Sydney said, “If Sloane can change, anyone can. Maybe Sark’s on the level.”

Vaughn coughed out a laugh, and shook his head again. “You, of all people, are willing to give that man the benefit of the doubt?”

“I’m not—” She tried again. “I’m just saying, the possibility bears considering.”

They stood there staring at each other for a few moments.

“Maybe we’d better wait and have lunch another day,” Vaughn said finally, and walked away.

Sydney pressed her lips together, and watched him go. At least some good had come out of their conversation. Because suddenly eating was the last thing she wanted to do.

 

III.

West Texas was sweltering, 102 degrees in the shade, and Sydney crouched in direct sun just beyond the ridge of a bluff that dropped into the valley of El Pueblo. Sweat had soaked into the fabric of her bra and the creases of her shorts. Sunglasses shielded her eyes from the blinding rays reflecting off the sand, and wisps of hair, escaped from her single long braid, tickled her jaw as she squinted through her binoculars at the town below. She suspected she was starting to freckle.

Sark had been spotted in the vicinity, and so Sydney—office expert in Sark and the only agent not currently down with a flu contracted from the FBI’s interagency cooperation task force—had boarded a plane and flown out. Images captured  _en route_  by the Air Marshal had him wearing the most bizarrely unattractive mustache she had ever seen, along with a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, white cowboy hat hung on the seat in front of him. But the airport surveillance tapes she had reviewed showed him to be his usual well-dressed self, if a shade on the casual side, upon arrival.

 _And the unusual disguises continue_ , Sydney thought, studying his movements through the binoculars. There was nothing particularly striking about this one, it simply wasn’t his usual style: distressed blue jeans and a light-colored t-shirt, possibly white (it was difficult to determine at this distance, with the glare of the store windows), sunglasses perched atop the bridge of his nose. He looked for all the world like a regular tourist enjoying a day of shopping.

Sydney frowned, and set the binoculars down to wipe her hands on her shorts; when she lifted them again he was gone from view. Frantically, she surveyed the valley. Nothing. He must have entered a store.  _He’ll turn up again_ , she assured herself.  _I just have to wait._

She was scanning doors intently when she felt a tap on her right shoulder.

“It’s quite hot out,” Sark said conversationally. “You might join me below for a drink. Certainly it would be easier to watch me from just across the table, and cooler besides.”

She’d dropped the binoculars; her spy skills, she suspected, were starting to slip. “How—”

He smiled tolerantly. “—did I know you were here? Or how did I make it up here without you seeing? I ducked out the back of that shop there on the left. See there? Where the back of the building disappears beneath that outcropping?”

He pointed, and she glanced along the line of his finger. She should have thought of that. Oh, hell, it was just a routine investigation. They didn’t even have any evidence he’d done anything. Lately. He still of course had the earlier life prison sentence he was officially required to serve. She should really be cuffing him and bringing him in. Maybe if it weren't so  _hot_  out.

He smirked at her. “You might as well come down with me.”

“I’m fine where I am,” she said airily, lifting the overpriced water bottle she’d purchased at the airport and taking a delicate sip. It was, predictably, rather warm.

“Suit yourself,” he responded, and shrugged. Then he turned and started back down the slope.

Damned if she wished she’d taken him up on the offer. It was only one PM, and it wasn’t getting any cooler.

He didn’t make an effort to hide his actions when he returned to the valley below. If anything, he was even more blatant about his movements as he went in and out of stores. He waved at her once from outside a souvenir shop, toasting her with the bottle of water he’d just purchased inside, and she thought,  _Cocky bastard_. She could see the sweat of the bottle as it dripped down the sides and onto his hand, trailing its way down his forearm as he lifted it to his mouth and drank . . .

She swallowed, throat dry. It was hot out, okay?

Around dinnertime he came sauntering up the slope again, in plain view, and so she was ready for him this time as he reached her surveillance site at the top of the bluff. He looked warm but not overheated; she, on the other hand, was soaked straight through her clothes. The wisps of hair that had earlier whipped about her face were now plastered to her skin. The tips of her ears were burnt.

“I’m heading back to the hotel now,” he told her.

“Good,” she said.

He smiled fondly; it was a little disturbing. “This,” he added, extending a small pink and black bag, “is for you.”

She took it, stared at it, and then stared at him.

“It’s not a bomb,” he told her. “They don’t sell the components down there.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, holding the pink rope handles gingerly.

“You’re very welcome.” He nodded to her, and left her.

Once she was sure he was gone, she cautiously opened up the bag and pressed the tissue paper aside. Inside was a tiny portable fan. She twisted it; it whirred to life, and she closed her eyes in sheer bliss. Under the fan, she noticed, was a business card from a lingerie shop down in the valley; on the back, it read:  _As long as we’re playing cat and mouse_. Under the card was a pair of underwear. She lifted it carefully and held it up by the sides. It was a low-slung thong, in black, with a tiny black and white pom-pom affixed by a string to the back. The pom-pom had cat ears.

She couldn’t help it; she laughed.

 

IV.

The next three days proceeded largely the same as the first, with Sydney watching Sark from above, and Sark going blithely about his daily routine. The second day he sat in the shade of a café with what might have been iced tea and a book in a language Sydney didn’t speak, and brought her a sun hat. It flopped ridiculously, but she wore it anyway. Her ears were peeling.

The third day he brought her a cushion for her knees, and was clearly pleased to see the hat he’d given her perched atop her head. He bid her goodnight, and she had already turned to pack up when he paused as he was leaving, asked, “Spoken to Agent Vaughn lately?”

“As little as possible,” she muttered without thinking, already focused on getting back to the hotel in time to enjoy a long swim in the pool before she passed out from exhaustion.

“Really.” He turned his head and looked back at her over his shoulder. There was a speculative glint in his eyes as he squinted at her, a late afternoon breeze flapping the tails of his thin royal blue button-down against his hips. “How . . . unfortunate.”

Disturbed by her own carelessness—and unwilling to admit she’d made a mistake—she chose a non-committal response. “Depends on your point of view.”

“Indeed it does.” He studied her a few moments more, and then: “Have a good evening, Agent Bristow.”

It was, she admitted silently to herself once he had gone, a bit anticlimactic. She’d been expecting something a bit more aggressive than leaving.

The day after he spent taking pictures with a disposable camera, and chatting with locals. When he came to see her he brought a spray of flowers he’d picked on his walk up, and an invitation. “I’ve been recommended a restaurant, La Casa de la Playa, by the woman who has been so kind as to serve me my tea these last few days.” He paused delicately. “It’s the sort of place I’d imagine you would enjoy.”

“I can find my own restaurants,” she snapped, irritable from another day spent out in the sun, legs cramping and neck stiffening from the effort of peering through binoculars at a man who  _never moved_. 

“While that’s encouraging,” he said, not trying very hard to hide his smile, “I was going to ask if you wished to join me there for a late dinner. I can’t imagine the CIA’s expense account runs toward haute cuisine.”

“Dinner?” she repeated, confused.

“Just think of the opportunity!” he pressed.

“To do what? Eat?”

“To question me, of course. The enigmatic Mr. Sark, entirely at your disposal.” There was a playful taunt in his voice. “Surely that’s not the sort of offer an agent of your . . . dedication . . . could turn down.”

She squinted up at him critically. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you,” she said, and he laughed.

“Enough.” Then he said, seriously, “You’re dodging the question, Sydney.”

She was. It shouldn’t have been this difficult to say no.

“I’ll be in the lobby of your hotel at eight.”

Of course he knew which hotel she was staying in.

“What will you do all alone in the lobby of my hotel?”

His mouth quirked. “Glad we’re agreed. Until then,” he said, and took off whistling back towards his hotel.

She stared after him, somewhat dumbfounded. She didn't have to meet him. But frankly, it was that, or the ham and cheese from the motel vending machine she'd so been looking forward to.

*

Sydney laid her hand over her forehead, wishing she hadn't just woken up. The room was spinning; she felt as if she were hungover, and she suspected she might still be drunk, and it didn’t seem fair to be able to be both at once.

“Feeling all right?” Sark’s voice was casual, amused, and right at her shoulder. His breath was warm against her skin.

“No. Go away.”

“You do realize this is my bed.”

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She winced. The light, even as subdued as it was coming in through the windows, hurt. Her only consolation was that Sark’s hair looked horrible. Well, messy anyway. It never really looked  _horrible_.

“Coffee?” she asked, pulling herself up to something approximating a sitting position. She hadn’t been this bad off since her first year of college.

“I’ll have some sent up,” Sark promised, and slid out of bed. Her head hurt too much to even watch him leave—which was criminal, considering the fact that he wasn’t wearing a whole lot, having apparently left his clothing somewhere . . . else. Not with her own clothing, however—though she was still in her underwear, her dress was pooled on the floor beside the bed. Only then realizing her near-nudity, she jerked the sheet up to cover herself . . . and nearly passed out from having moved far, far too quickly for her current state of health.

Once she’d recovered enough for her brain to start functioning almost normally again, she tried very, very hard to remember exactly what had happened.

*

She hadn't had that ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. Instead, she'd gone back to her room, showered, indulged in a little liquid courage, and dressed for dinner with Sark.

Sydney didn’t have a lot of experience dressing for possibly reformed international terrorists (the period during which her mother was in CIA custody notwithstanding), but when she arrived in the lobby of her hotel in a yellow sundress and spiked heels, he didn't seem to mind.

He drove a convertible, top down and air conditioning blasting, and it made her hair tangle hideously. She'd spent the first fifteen minutes of the drive pretending not to care, but she’d taken some time brushing it out and curling the ends to complement the flounce of her skirt, and it irritated her to have her work undone. It took another thirty before she relaxed and begin to like the way the wind felt in her hair. Whenever the road emptied—as happened often this time of year, the Texas heat deterring unnecessarily travel—he pressed the pedal to the floor for no reason at all, and eventually she lay back, closed her eyes and worked on enjoying the movement of the car as they sped along the highway.

She commented once on the scenery (the silence had been making her nervous—maybe they weren’t going to dinner at all, maybe he was taking her out to kill her), but he only turned his head and grinned at her. She couldn’t recalling having previously ever seen his teeth; it, and his obvious pleasure in the drive, made him seem almost . . . warm. Like someone she wouldn’t mind spending time with.

  
The restaurant was casual, local; the cars parked in the lot around Sark’s rental would not, combined, match the cost of his usual vehicles. The sun was nearly down now and it lit the sky in broad strokes of pink and orange and midnight blue, illuminating the restaurant with its rough-hewn wooden rafters hung with strings of white Christmas lights. Warmer-toned lights glowed inside. She sat, stunned, with the door open. Staring. It was cozy, and pleasantly packed judging by the muted sounds of laughter, and the last place she’d ever have pictured Sark.

“I know,” he sighed, as he came around to her side of the car, “it’s not where I imagined our first date, either. But I was assured the food was excellent, and I’ve never been averse to trying something . . . new.”

“This is not a date,” she said as if she believed it.

“Of course,” he said politely, and offered her help stepping out of the car.

She took it.

They were seated at a quieter corner table with a trio of candles lighting the center, and she let Sark choose the wine. She was surprised when he ordered the house red.

“As long as we’re here,” he explained as it was poured, “we might as well experience what is available to the fullest.” He glanced at her slyly. “Don’t you agree?”

He was flirting with her. The man had no shame. She wished that wasn’t suddenly so attractive. Vaughn had always had plenty of shame. He was a lot like her, that way.

“Even if I do,” she told Sark, “that doesn’t mean I’m going to have sex with you.”

He grinned. “Why, Ms. Bristow, certainly you don’t believe me to be the kind of boy who does that sort of thing on the first date.” He took his napkin from the table and lay it primly over his lap. “I’ve reformed.”

She snickered. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth. Possibly those little bottles of vodka she’d had on an empty stomach before she’d left the hotel room—to relax—hadn’t been the best idea.

He regarded her, amused.

“Come on,” she said, “that’s  _funny_. You. Reformed.”

“Even if it’s true?”

“Especially if it’s true.”

“I suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way.” He lifted his glass to her, and she obliged by tapping it with her own and sipping. Good. But then again, she had been known to drink wine quite happily from a box back in college. She was good at finding something to enjoy in whatever happened to come her way—some moment of truth, of sincerity, of value.

She set the glass down, swallowed, and licked the excess from her lips. “Sark, can I ask you a question?”

“It wouldn’t be very sporting of me if I said no,” he said. He was looking, she noticed, at her mouth, and she flushed, heating again the way she had in the desert. “Please. Proceed.”

“What were you doing in Lisbon?”

“You mean at the party, with Debussy.”

“Yes,” she said. “I mean at the party. With Debussy.”

And somehow business was failing to disrupt the mood, or break his gaze from her mouth.

Finally—as if he’d only been waiting for her to understand he was no longer looking at her lips of his own volition—he raised his eyes to hers, and smiled into them. “It’s only to be expected that I keep my hand in, Sydney. For my own safety. Those in our line of work who make themselves too difficult to find are often found dead.”

“And my mother?” she asked curiously.

“Ah, Irina, yes. Irina is the exception that proves the rule. Besides,” he said, shifting the conversation away from the woman they had in common, “one cannot escape this life entirely, no matter how much we might wish it.”

She picked up her wine again, and took a healthy swallow to cure the dryness of her throat. “That’s a depressing thought.”

His smile was crooked, but not bitter. “Isn’t it?”

She lost count of the number of glasses of wine she had. Every time the glass dipped below some predetermined level, it was refilled. By the time dessert was served she was lax, and sleepy, and feeling soft towards the man sitting across from her: the plateaus of his cheekbones, the set of his mouth.

She reclined the seat on the ride back, closed her eyes, and let the wind rush over her face—she was vibrating mutedly with abandon, and with warmth for this place and the sky and the wind and the car and the man driving it, right hand on the stick shift brushing, now and then, against the heated, shivery skin of her thigh.

“Sark,” she murmured as he slowed, pulling off the highway back into town, “are you going to ask me up to your room for a nightcap?”

“I wasn’t aware you’d welcome the question,” he said, making a show of his surprise, but Sydney could hear the sly almost-playfulness underlying it. Playful wasn’t a word she’d ever associated with Sark. He was largely imperturbable, always well-mannered, and once in a while almost whimsical, but there was always a briskness to his reactions, and a distance, as if he had created a deliberate space between them and him. It was absent here.

“Because I wouldn’t,” she said. She stretched her legs, feeling the pull luxuriously all the way down to her feet, and then nudged her toes back into her shoes. She’d nearly fallen asleep, she realized. She was usually more careful than that. This was still Sark. She was still Sydney Bristow, CIA agent. He was still dangerous, if he wanted to be. Though it was hard to conceive of it, considering the cat-eared underwear she had tucked carefully into her hotel room drawer.

When he didn’t say anything, she added, “You should ask me anyway.”

“All right.” He glanced sideways at her, and she rather suspected he was trying not to laugh. “Sydney, would you like to come up for a nightcap?”

“Yes, Julian, I would. Thank you for asking.”

Then he did laugh. He sounded, bizarrely, charmed. Did she do that? Not on purpose, she hoped. “You are quite drunk, aren’t you.”

He probably knew how much she’d had to drink better than she did. Then again, she’d had the three-vodka head start.

“I’m out of practice drinking,” she told him, and wet her lips.

Upstairs in his room he poured her another drink. The bastard. He’d probably been trying to get her drunk. Drunker. She couldn’t really lay all the blame on him, however. She was doing a heck of a job all on her own, trying to handle the disjunction between this Sark and the one she’d known (well, seen around a lot) before—between the Sark who had irritated her and then made her loathe him (Will, Francie,  _oh God_ ) and the one who brought her silly hats and whose lower lip she was wanting, just at that moment, to take between her teeth and . . . .

Maybe he was a clone. She thought it might be alright if he was a clone. She didn’t think he was, though. And she’d had some practice now figuring that sort of thing out.

He’d made her drink a glass of water first, however, which was . . . sweet. And then she had that last drink (cranberry juice and more vodka, she was pretty sure). And then she didn’t really remember much after that.

*

The sheet was tucked securely around Sydney's breasts when Sark returned, cup of steaming coffee and a tiny silver pitcher of milk in hand. She’d never been happier to see him. The fact he was still only in his boxers had nothing to do with it.

She accepted both coffee and milk gratefully, tipped most of the milk into the cup, and handed the pitcher back. He set it on the nightstand. Then he sat on the edge of the bed next to her. There was, she noticed thankfully, a full three and a half feet of space between them. It was going to make this far easier.

She sipped the coffee; it scalded her mouth but she already felt better. She drank a little bit more, and then rested the cup on the bedspread between her crossed legs and looked at Sark.

“What happened last night?” she asked.

He pressed his lips together for a moment, and then looked away. “If you must know, you banished me to the couch. Then you fell asleep fully clothed, and I tucked you in here before going to bed myself.” He looked back at her wryly. “I really couldn’t say how your dress ended up on the floor.”

So there’d been no taking advantage. He really  _was_  playing by the rules now. Except:

“But when I woke up, you were . . . here.” She gestured to the other side of the bed.

A slight blush almost imperceptibly stained his cheeks (Sark  _blushed_?  _Must be a clone thing_ , she thought). “The other room was . . . cold.”

“Oh,” she said intelligently. She took another swallow. Then she handed the cup to him. “I have to go,” she said.

“I thought you might.”

She slid out of bed, still holding the sheet to her chest, and turned her back to pull the dress on. She could feel him watching her as she lifted it over her head and then tugged it into place; her skin tingled. She glanced at him, and he said, “Your purse and shoes are by the door.”

“Thank you,” she said, and left the bedroom. She slid her shoes on, double-checked for her room key and cab fare, and headed for the door. Hand on the knob, she paused and looked back.

“Sark?” she said.

“Yes, Sydney?” He was standing at the doorway to the bedroom, leaned against the frame. He looked almost . . . bleak.

“Are you going to be in town again today?”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing anything tonight?”

Interest sparked in his eyes. “Nothing I’d planned on. Why?”

“My room—you could come by. I’ll need time to put up my equipment and shower, but after that . . .”

Amusement and pleasure brightened his face, and he crossed the room before she could escape. He lifted one hand to tuck a curl behind her ear

“Pretty, pretty Sydney,” he murmured as he stroked his hand over her hair. Gently, he lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she nearly melted right into him. He lifted his head again and smiled in satisfaction.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

She really hoped she wasn’t going to regret this.

 

V.

  
When he wasn’t down in the valley by noon, she started to wonder if he’d just been lulling her into a false sense of security—if he was now off doing something evil and illegal the next town over. She worried if he’d make it back by that night. Then she worried about her sanity, because clearly she couldn’t open the door to him if he’d been off doing something illegal. Okay, she could open the door to him, but then she had to arrest him.

Thankfully he turned up slightly after twelve-thirty, smiled at her in a way that made her insides tremble, and gave her a little wave. Satisfied, and a little giddy with relief, she settled in to watch him, and to wait.

The benefit of her current assignment was of course that it gave her plenty of opportunity to look at him. The downside was that it also gave her plenty of opportunity to think.

First she considered the pros and cons of getting involved with Sark. Then she realized she was pretty much already involved with Sark, at least for the short term, and moved on to other things. Like what she was doing with her life. She was, she decided after a few minutes of thought, tired. Not of anything in particular, just . . . in general. This reconnaissance mission was the closest she’d come to a vacation—well, a relaxing one, at any rate—in a very long time. Which was silly, and her own fault. This wasn’t like SD-6, when she was playing double-agent for the CIA and every day of vacation meant that much less intel she could use to bring them down. Now she was just another agent, no more specially qualified than any other for the missions she was sent on. She was good, but she wasn’t irreplaceable.

When she got back, she’d take some vacation days, she decided. She might even give a little more thought to that whole living thing Sark kept going on about. Maybe get a hobby that didn’t involve guns. It’d been ages since she’d read a novel.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number she’d been given with the rest of her intel.

Sark answered.

“Will you buy me a book?”

“Good afternoon to you too, Sydney.” He sounded amused. She wasn’t yet used to him sounding warm towards her—towards anyone, really—and it threw her momentarily.

“I’d come down and buy it myself, but I’m supposed to be working. I’ll pay you back.”

He laughed at that. “Will any book do?”

“As long as its fiction.” She picked up the binoculars with her free hand and peered at him through it. His hand was shading his eyes as he squinted in her direction.

“I think I can manage that. Shall I bring it to you this afternoon, or save it for tonight?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Tonight is fine,” she said, a little ashamed at how she sounded: eager, breathless, a little unsteady.

He was smirking; he probably knew she could see him, the bastard.

When the sun went down he waved to her again, and took off back towards his hotel. Already she could feel a low hum of anticipation inside of her. She packed her equipment quickly, and returned to the hotel in record time, unloading the film and tape recordings from the day into her safe deposit box at the desk before storing the rest upstairs. She set her daily logs uploading to the CIA servers while she took a shower and set her hair. It was at 53% by the time she found and pulled on the strappy tank and loose silk pants. It rounded 80% as she finished her light makeup and shook her curlers out. And it hit 100% just before the knock came on her door.

She slipped the disk in a drawer and locked it tight, and logged out of her computer and shut the laptop lid. Then she tucked her hair behind her ears and opened the door.

He held a wrapped package in one hand—her book—and a white lily in the other, sharply in contrast with his slim black t-shirt. And he was wearing jeans—perfectly fitted designer jeans, but jeans nonetheless. She thought she might be developing a Sark-in-jeans fetish.

“Does this feel stupid to you?” she asked, staring at him standing there, in her hallway, like a teenager on a first date.

His mouth quirked. “A bit.”

“Okay,” she said. “Good.” Then she yanked him inside.

The lily dropped, the door slammed, and he just managed to let the book fall on the couch as she pulled him past it into the bedroom.

His mouth was as greedy as her own. She felt the side of her bed hit the back of her legs as he moved to her neck, and she thought,  _Right where I want you._  Then she slid her hands under his shirt to the hot skin underneath. He jerked in surprise, and she laughed, and tugged his shirt upwards.

He was leaner somehow than she’d expected, but she'd never felt anything better, she thought, as she skimmed her hands slowly down his sides to tuck her fingers into the waistband of his jeans. She slid them around until she could pop the button free.

As much as she liked the jeans, they were harder to get off of him than his usual slacks would have been. But he was still kissing her intently, his hands exploring her shoulders, lowering the straps of her tank, pushing it down and pressing his hands to her breasts with a low sigh, and so she didn’t mind.

His jeans off, boxers with them, she pushed him down onto the bed.

“Oh, God,  _Sydney_ ,” he said, as she spread his legs and settled in between them.

It made her hot to hear him. He was babbling things she never could have imagined Sark saying: endearments, curses, pleas. He groaned and she curled her tongue around him, licked long and slow and with relish. She liked him, she realized as she slid her hands around to brace his hips, keep them from thrusting as she quickened her pace. She liked this side of him, the open one, the one that brought her flowers and books and didn’t shoot anybody, that could sit all day in the middle of nowhere with a cappuccino and a book and not think his day had been wasted. She liked the way he looked at her. She liked the warmth in him when he laughed. And she liked the way he tasted as he let out a surprised, strangled cry and came hard against her tongue.

She swallowed and sat back on her heels while he regained his bearings. “Thanks for dinner last night,” she said, cleaning a stray drop from her mouth with her thumb and licking it off—worth it for the look of dazed, aroused shock on his face.

“I’ll take you out for three meals daily,” he vowed. His face and chest were flushed, his breathing still erratic. “More, if you’d like.”

She smiled and wiggled out of her top, pulled the drawstring on her pants and let them fall as she stood. “Don’t press your luck.”

He laughed, but his eyes were sliding over her: breasts, belly, thighs. “You’re wearing my gift.”

“Seemed appropriate.” She put one knee up on the bed, then the other, straddling him as he shifted backwards to accommodate her. His breath shivered across her stomach, and his fingers traced lightly up the outsides of her thighs.

Then he bent his head to tongue her through the black mesh, and she immediately wished she hadn’t worn anything at all.

He must have agreed. “Off,” he ordered, and she let him lift her back onto the carpet, his hands at her waist, so he could slide her underwear down to the floor. She stepped obediently out of them.

He met her halfway, on his feet, clasping her tightly to him, kissing her, and then laying her back on her own hotel bed, pressing her thighs apart and lowering his mouth. Pleasure shuddered through her.

“Better,” he paused to inform her seriously, before setting back to his work.

She arched desperately, pressing into his tongue.  _Oh God_ , she thought, dizzy.  _I’ve completely compromised my mission._

*

“Sydney. How many of those have you had?” Sark asked nearly two hours later as he ran his fingers lazily through her hair. She lay with her head cushioned at the juncture of his arm and shoulder, one leg thrown over his, and she lifted her head slightly to follow his line of sight. A small colony of minibar bottles had accumulated on the dresser, most left over from the night before since she’d been changing that morning when the maid stopped by to straighten up.

“None,” she said. Then, “Okay, two. They’re tiny.” When he laughed, she protested, “I’m not intoxicated.”

“No, of course not. If I may hazard a guess—you just needed to relax?”

“You’re very stressful.”

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I don’t mean to be.”

No, he didn’t, and that was a bit of a mind warp in and of itself.

“Have you really changed?” she asked quietly, turning in his embrace until she was on her back and could look at him, his eyes and the soft, expressive line of his mouth. He lied too well when he wanted to for the sincerity of his expression to matter, but she needed to be looking at him anyway. Mostly she just liked looking at him.

“In a sense,” he said. He kissed her shoulder thoughtfully, sliding his thumb idly along the outer curve of her breast. “As much as I am capable of, I suspect.”

“And how much,” she asked, “is that?”

“Enough to stop killing at others’ behests. Enough to disappoint past clients that occasionally still assume my services are for sale.” His eyes danced with a barely concealed smirk. “Enough, it seems, to win you into my bed.”

“I wasn’t that hard of a sell.”

He frowned, and looked her over severely. “Yes, clearly you must have been wanting for male attention before I came along. How you’ve managed to bewitch me is simply beyond my comprehension.”

She smacked him, lightly. It seemed to be the only answer that was necessary.

She lay quietly in his arms, considering his answer. After a few moments, he spoke again: “My freedom, I have discovered, is more important to me than any ideology possibly could be, even—no,  _especially_ —those to which I previously ascribed. As much as I may respect you and the choices you’ve made, all political affiliations seem to me inconsequential now, at least as compared to the ability to do as I please.”

“And what do you please?”

“You, Sydney, I hope.” He nuzzled her hair, and she closed her eyes, smiling. She relaxed into his embrace, letting the sound of her travel alarm clock in the silence of the suite lull her back into sleep. And then he said: “Stay with me.”

She nearly knocked her head into his chin. “What?”

“I believe I’ve just asked you to stay with me.”

She stared at him. He was serious. He was completely, 100%, absolutely serious.

"Here?" And the funny thing was, right at that moment, she wanted to. It was a bit of a head rush, how much she wanted to. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been planning to take some vacation time anyway. “I can’t.”

He was unfazed. “We’ll go anywhere you’d like. It doesn’t have to be here.”

“No,” she said. “Really.”

“Rome. Paris. Hawaii. Even Los Angeles, if that’s what you wish.”

“Sark. I can’t. No.”

  
VI.

Seventeen days after Sydney first left for Texas, her father received a postcard.

 _In Hawaii ‘til Christmas, maybe longer. You should visit. Sark would be thrilled._

Printed on the front, a bright yellow scrawl across a nightscape of the beach, were five small cheery words: “No place I’d rather be.”


End file.
